From where he sat, Liddell could hear the soft rustle of the silk as she slid out of the pajamas. Then, she straightened up. The whiteness of her body gleamed in the reflected light. Her legs were long, sensuously shaped. Full, rounded thighs swelled into high set hips, converged into the narrow waist he had admired earlier in the evening. Her breasts were full and high, their pink tips straining upward.
As she stood there, she raised her hands slowly from her sides and loosened the pile of hair on top of her head, letting it cascade down over her shoulders. It glittered in the faint light.
She padded across the room, stood proudly in front of Liddell.
The luminous hands of the clock set next to the couch pointed to 4:10. The blonde stirred uneasily, opened her eyes, stared around in the unfamiliar darkness. Suddenly, she sprang to wide-eyed wakefulness, sat up, pulled the blanket around her. “Liddell! Liddell! Where are you?” she said.
The door to the bathroom beyond opened, spilling a triangle of yellow light into the darkened living room. Liddell walked in, drying his still damp hair. He was dressed except for his shirt and tie. “Shower wake you, Baby? Sorry. You go on back to sleep.”
“You’re not going to leave me here alone?”
“I’ve got something I’ve got to do. You’ll be all right here. Just don’t answer any telephone calls or open the door. I have my key.”
“But where are you going?”
Liddell balled the damp towel, tossed it at the open bathroom door. “To have a little talk with Marty Cowan before the police find out he’s mixed up in this. There are a couple of things I want to ask him.”
The blonde dropped the blanket, stood up. “Let the police do it, Johnny. Why should you stick your neck out any further?”
He pecked at her cheek, took his shirt from the back of a chair, shrugged into it. “Tony wasn’t much of a guy, Baby, but he was my client. He didn’t get much of a shake out of this deal, so I intend to give him his money’s worth from here on in. He’s going to get the full treatment.”
She shook her head helplessly. “Don’t. Please don’t go.”
“I won’t be long, Baby,” he promised. He lifted his shoulder holster from a peg in the closet, adjusted it, covered it with his jacket. “Marty Cowan still got that place on Twelfth Street?”
The blonde dropped her eyes, nodded. “I’ve never been up there. He kept asking me, but I never went.” She looked up at him. “I want you to believe that.”
Liddell nodded. “Don’t forget what I said. Don’t answer the phone or open the door for anybody at all.”
She nodded, slid her arms around his neck, pressed her body close to his.
Marty Cowan lived in an old, high-stooped brownstone house on Twelfth Street in the Village. It was one of a whole block of identical brownstones which had been converted into expensive flats.
Liddell climbed the high stone stoop, tried the vestibule door. It pushed open easily. On the hall door there was a neatly printed sign urging, “For your own comfort, please be sure this door is closed after you.” The last one in apparently didn’t believe in signs.
Liddell pushed the door open, obediently made sure it was closed behind him. There was no elevator; a flight of expensively carpeted stairs led to the upper stories.
Cowan’s apartment, 2D, turned out to be second floor rear. Liddell knocked softly, applied his ear to the door. There was no indication of anyone being at home. After a moment, he repeated his knock. There was still no answer.
He tried the doorknob, found it locked, brought out a handful of keys. The third one he tried opened the door. He stepped in, closed the door behind him. He yanked his .45 from its holster, transferred it to his left hand.
He had the eerie, uncomfortable feeling that he wasn’t alone in the room. He squinted into the darkness, strained his ears for some sound that would betray the presence of someone else. There was no sound.
After a moment, Liddell slid his hand cautiously along the wall until he felt the light switch. He pressed the switch, throwing the room into sudden, blinding light. Simultaneously, he dropped to his knee, his .45 ready.
Marty Cowan, Tony’s ex-partner, sat in an overstuffed library chair not ten feet from him, staring at him with unblinking eyes. His holster, with a snub-nosed automatic nestling in it, hung over the back of his chair, the butt less than a foot from his hand.
Liddell got up, walked over to where Marty sat. He bent over him, examined the three dark little holes that had ripped through the back of his head, spilled a cascade of red down his shirt.
From the dead man’s lap, Liddell picked up a sheet of notepaper, typed on the already familiar machine, threatening death unless Cowan paid the unknown sender $20,000. It was phrased almost identically with the note that Tony had received.
Liddell scowled, straightened up, looked around. On the table at the dead man’s elbow there was a bowl of melted ice, two glasses half full of brown liquid.
He put his fingers inside one of the glasses, spread them out until he could lift the glass without defacing any of the prints on the outside. Then he breathed on the outside of the glass.
There was no sign of a print.
He repeated the procedure with the other glass, found a full set of over-large prints.
“That’s a big help,” he said. “Killer wore gloves.” He was about to set the glass back on the table when he caught the wail of a siren from somewhere close. Quickly, he went to the door and light switch and wiped off any possible fingerprints with his handkerchief.
From below, he could hear the stamp of heavy footsteps. He bolted the hall door, made for the bedroom. Inside, he closed the door after him, headed for the window, opened it.
It was a relatively short drop from the ladder to the square below.
Above, he could hear sounds of mounting commotion in the apartment he had just left. A light flashed on in the bedroom window and a hoarse voice shouted. Liddell made his way cautiously across the courtyard to a door leading to an alleyway beyond.
He had barely reached the courtyard door when a figure was silhouetted in the window above. Liddell kept going, reached the door, tugged it open and slammed it shut behind him. There was a series of sharp snaps and ugly, jagged holes ripped through the planking of the door.
Liddell kept going.
At the far end of the alley, he came into the street. A late cruising cab stopped at his hail. Liddell gave the address of his hotel, settled back in the cushions. From close by came the wails and shrieks of police sirens.
“Nice quiet neighborhood,” Liddell said.
“Happens all the time down here, mister,” the cabbie said. “Couple of queens probably got into a fight over a truck driver and started marcelling each other’s hair with a flat iron. Happens all the time.”
The blonde started, looked up wide-eyed as Liddell let himself into his apartment. He ignored the questions in her eyes, headed for the end table, poured himself a drink from the bottle.
“What’s happened? Marty isn’t—”
Liddell repeated his prescription, nodded. “Dead. Shot through the back of his head.”
He set the glass down, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Had a note in his lap threatening to get him unless he paid up. Just like Tony.”
“I don’t get it.” The blonde shook her head. “All the time I thought it was Marty. I thought he was behind it.”
Liddell shucked his jacket, slid out of his shoulder holster, dropped it on the couch. “Looks like it’s all a neat package now. Cowan’s dead, Tony’s dead, the sniper’s dead, and Tony’s bodyguard has a half emptied magazine in his gun to prove he died protecting his boss.”